Tuesday night on his show On Balance, NewsNation host Leland Vittert lambasted progressives and their media allies dismissing concerns about crime in Washington D.C. by invoking President Trump’s role in the events of January 6, 2021 as a way to shutdown debate, calling it a “playbook” hell bent on “hijack[ing]” debate to “something four years ago that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.”
Vittert began by throwing back to a fiery segment from Monday’s show with Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan, formerly of al-Jazeera and MSNBC:
Democrats playbook against President Donald Trump is very simple: Oppose everything he does and if you can argue the facts, just pound the table and yell about January 6th...The strategy was on full display Monday in our segment about Trump’s surging federal law enforcement and sending in the National Guard to Washington, D.C.
During said throw down, Vittert tore into Hasan’s cheap shots by labeling the left’s strategy to “noun, verb, January 6.”
Vittert then hit the nail on the head by laying out he doesn’t oppose robust policy debates and thus is the mantra of his show (and, we would add, NewsNation itself):
Everybody is welcome to disagree on policy or argue data or philosophy. That’s why we have this program. That’s what makes us different. That’s what makes you, as a viewer, different. You choose to tune in here to hear things you disagree with and to be challenged. But no one is welcome to come on here and hijack a segment and make it about something four years ago that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.
After a clip of MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough admitting he doesn’t “care what the crime statistics say” because “crime has been a problem...for the 32 years” he’s been living in and visiting D.C., Vittert directly addressed this “January 6 playbook” Hasan and others have resorted to.
Vittert argued such fallacies don’t belong because “you, our viewers, deserve better” in the form of “an honest conversation on the merits of policy and making us a better country.”
The former Fox News host and correspondent laid out a position on January 6 many Americans likely agree with: “January 6 was awful. I was in the middle of it. Hell, I was even confronted by the mob, multiple times. It is a stain on our country’s history. But it was four years ago. It has absolutely nothing to do with the current crime epidemic in D.C.”
To be clear, Vittert didn’t dismiss January 6. Rather, he emphasized the two are unrelated and a heckler’s veto of sorts to avoid the real problem.
He then led into soundbites of MSNBC personalities Peter Baker, Vaughn Hillyard, and Al Sharpton dismissing crime as a major issue by saying “suddenly, all we heard from the left, everybody across the board as if they all got the same talking points was crime in DC is down 26 percent.”
Unamused by these hijinks, Vittert said he chose to do his job “as a journalist” by “question[ing] the talking points”:
So, we did that, and here’s what we found. From NBC 4 Washington back in July: “D.C. police commander suspended, accused of changing crime statistics...The union claims police supervisors in the department manipulate crime data to make it appear violent crime has fallen considerably compared to last year.” So, maybe the talking points aren’t even true.
He went onto blast D.C. as “a mess, and crime is rampant and out of control, but an important point” was not only has D.C.’s police chief state she needs more help, but the police union has said the same.
Once he showed the stunning fact that D.C.’s homicide rate “is almost five times higher” than the one in New York City and that there was a murder Monday night in Logan Circle, Vittert concluded with more common sense talk about those perpetually obsessed with January 6 whenever they refuse to behave like adults:
But no, of course, D.C. is totally safe. Democrats and the left-leaning media outlets have no brand except to fight against Trump. And when they’re on the losing side of an issue, as we have just shown you, they will fight on the issue. They go back to January 6 and that is totally their right. But it is our responsibility — it is my responsibility to call them out on it.
To see the relevant NewsNation transcript from August 12, click here.
